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From: arsmith@lamar.ColoState.EDU (Alan Smith)
Newsgroups: alt.pub.dragons-inn
Subject: [NTY] Being a document left in the temple of Xyvv...
Date: 11 Oct 1994 17:34:48 -0600
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ADMIN: Thanks to Lirelan Li for her suggestion, and to hutch for scaring
up a copy of the post when I accidentally didn't keep one.  (I call this
the Dragon's inn syndrome.)  Apologies to Andy Solberg for inflicting the
prep phase of this post on him.  Hopefully he'll recover.  Apologies to
the rest of the [NTY] team for warping this post rather more than I
had intended to.  Hopefully *I'll* recover.
-------------------------------------------------------------------------
   NOTE: The following was deposited in our archives by a strange-looking
   Rameshander who seemed to be in fear of his life and wished to make
   his statement to posterity.  The Priest who took his statement seemed
   rather shaken on removing himself from the conclave, and has gone on
   a soul-searching tour to the the dwarven nation of King Gorrin.  He
   may be reached there courtesy of the temple of Xyvv. -- Salan Akimba,
   Priest.


   My name is Quibar al-Fadid, and I am the ships carpenter of the _Pride
of Orculatar_, both of us Rameshanders.  I am depositing this scroll in
the temple of the Generican god of Time, in the hopes that it can protect
my testament from the ravages of the Force, and from the greycloaks that
would doubtless wish to destroy it.  I wish there to be a record of what
happened to us, that if we dissapear without a trace someone can find out
what happened to us.

   The _Pride_ is a merchant vessel, dealing in spices that come along the
silk road and are sent to a merchant of the Company of Traders, who trades them
for gems with a country far to the east up the ceruputhon river.  Legend has
it that this route was opened by an operative of the Amber Crescent, and that
the country is acutally ruled by a dragon.  Being a good Rameshander and
reverant of the Shaheran I don't believe in the Amber Crescent, so I count
these legends as naught.  I set them here in order to dispell them.

   After an uneventful trip the _Pride_ had offloaded her cargo of Cathayan
Imessgee and was scheduled to load a cargo of sapphires and diamonds.  Because
we were not needed that evening save to guard the ship, the Captain allowed
most of the crew to go ashore and recreate.  After consulting with our
bosun, Athal Shalam, the crew decided to go to a tavern he knew of whereat to
drink, brawl, and whore each according to his own tastes.  The Generican ales
are unpleasant to my stomach, so I started my evening by brawling with
a pair of dwarves who's beards I disliked the cut of.  The dwarves fought 
valiantly, but several of the bosuns mates and able bodied seamen came to my
aide and we vanquished them with our fists.  After that I started a
conversation with a duskwalker clad in some fine silks, and we started to stroll
through the low city of Generica.  We bargained fiercely over the price of
her services, for I had promised to show a dozen of my friends the pleasures
of women and I did not wish to empauper myself in the process.  We finally
agreed on a set (if abit still too high) fee for herself and three of
her friends, whereat they would each take three of us.

  Slikenhips (for that was what she called herself) and I parted company, 
each to retrieve their own friends and rendevous at her home at the
borders of the section of town called It-At.  I gathered my friends
together and there we headed.  I remember turning the corner of Alskerath
and Moravy avenues, and then everything changed suddenly.  
  
  I found myself laying on my side in a much darker section of the city,
watching most of my friends proceed along without me as a body lay atop mine.
The architecture of this area had changed rapidly, as had the stars.  Instead
of east, I was now facing south.  The body atop mine shifted rapidly as
I felt my limbs being bound by cord, and I shouted out saying, "Help!  My
mates, help me!"  Or, I would have, had a hand belonging to the body not
swiftly clamped itself atop my mouth and a low, hoarse voice instructed me
to be quiet.  "What are you doing with me?  I have an appointment with sliken-
hips." I asked when I was allowed to speak again.
  "Well, you got her.  Isn't that right beta-four?" a quiet voice
said, several yards behind me.
  "Too true, beta-two." Another quiet voice said, giggling slightly.  The
body atop mine giggled a bit too, and it is then that I realized it was female.
After she had finished binding my arms, she stuck her head into my field of
view.  She was clad all in this peculiar shade of grey I had a very hard
time distinguishing against the background, with a grey cap close to her
head and a grey mask over her face from her nose down.  She was darker-skinned
than I, even, and I thought her a southern Ramehsander until I saw her
eyes, where she looked like an islander from one of the Antilles.
   "Sorry about this." She explained to me in the quietest voice of all,
"but we have to get your friends too and transport them all out of here,
and it's a lot easier if you can't fight us.  This is for your own good,
trust me.  I make it twelve, counting these guys, one."  The last sentance
didn't seem to be aimed at me, but at someone standing behind her.  "If
you just keep quiet everything will be fine." She reassured me.
   "Right." The one who was called One said.  "Call the Q-unit on
duty and ask for backup. And transport for a dozen people.  Advise
them that we're following the other eight."
   "Gotcha." the person who was with me said.  She took off her cap, sat down,
and rested for a while in what looked like the trance the Oracle would go in
from time to time.  Then she replaced her cap, stood, and moved off down the
street silently.  I watched her as long as I could, but as soon as I blinked
she dissapeared.

   I was not totally imobilized, and by the twisting of my muscles I could
roll myself over and see behind me, where I expected to find more greycloaks,
but only found three of my friends, Hasal, Achmen, and Fadar.  We discussed
what we were to do, and I rolled over again so that Achmen could inch close to
me and attack the knots binding my arms.  He fumbled a bit but soon started
making progress on my knots, but stopped suddenly when a third friend
screamed with fear, all the more horrible for it being cut off suddenly.
   My friend and I rolled over to see what was going on behind us and I
froze, beholding the *thing* that shambled up to us.  It was vaugly humanoid
shaped, but bent and misshapen, with the apprarance of something rotting and
falling apart, like a zombie who has been prowling around too long with a spell
to weak to keep it from falling apart.  It shambled up to Fadar,  who
had screamed, sat him up, observed that his mouth was still open in terror,
and shoved itself down my friends throat. Precisely how it did this I
still can't explain, as neither it nor my friend changed size in any
dimension, but somehow it pushed its head in my friends mouth, and
shoved up to it's shoulders, then down to its ribs, and it apparently
used it's arms to pull it's legs in.  My friend, meanwhile, went through
stages of starker fear and horror to states I didn't think humans were
capable of experiencing.
   What I saw next will burn my mind until the end of my days, and will
no doubt, cause my death as a raving madman.  My friend, whom I had finished
fashioning some misspotted dice for just this morning, CHANGED.  His
skin turned from a healthy brown to a sickly, faintly iridescent green.
His hair grew several inches in fits and patches and in places where
people don't usually grow hair, like the eyelids.  His muscles swelled,
bursting his bonds, and one arm stretched out to six or seven feet long
while the other shrivelled into a stump.  He stood up, adopting the warped,
shriveled stance of the thing that had approached us, and cackled hideously.
The worst was that his fear, after first passing his ability to express
verbally and then by means of expression, ripped through his mind and
transmitted itself to myself and my two friends directly.  Each of us FELT
it as our friend's body warped and changed itself before our eyes.
   My mind wished to take refuge in madness, and would have then and there
as what was just recently my close commerade stood over us cackling had
not an arrow chosen that moment to burst through the thing's forehead
and it fell to the ground dead.  I started to black out as large wooden
carts with neither horses nor wheels pulled up and stopped near us.  Another
greycloak leapt off one of the carts and said, "Oh my god, Q-one's gonna
be PISSED when he hears about this.  Alpha three, contact beta and tell them
that your squad and myself are here, then I want you and alpha one to load the
survivors and run them back to the base.  Tell Q-one I'm going to join Beta
with the balance of your squad."
   Idly pondering the meaning of this cryptic language, my mind finally found
relative peace in the blackness of sleep.

   I awoke the next morning in the common room of an inn near the docks. 
Eleven of my twelve companions were there, along with Silkenhips and
what looked like a friend.  "It's a lethe potion." Silkenhips said,
handing me a small vial.  "Supposed to make you forget what happened over
the past eight or ten hours.  This wierd gal wearing a grey cloak gave me
some gold and told me to give you guys these when you came to.  By the
looks of you hon, you need it."  It was then that I noticed she had a 
fine-featured face, of dark skin and oval, oriental eyes.
   "There is something I have to do." I said, arising and dusting myself
off.  "I shall return soon."
   "Hokay, don't you wanna drink this first?"
   "No." I replied.
   Silkenhips shrugged, "Okay.  Hey, when you get back, you want a freebie?
the gal gave me enough gold and didn't even take a peckle.  I feel I gotta
pay *somebody* ya know?"  I smiled at her and walked over to the
temple of Xyvv, where I wrote this scroll, and am leaving it with the
priests of that god, in the hopes that they can keep it against whatever
that thing might have been, had it brothers, and the greycloaks who want
me to forget everything.  Should something untoward happen to me, it will
stand as a testament to what really happened that night, and who to look for
to avenge me.
			    Signed Quibar al-Fadid, 4th Shalat, third
			    year of the new Shaheran.

   --NOTE:  There are in these archives an issue of the _Generican
   Examiner_, dated three weeks after the depositon of this scroll,
   telling of the finding of the wreckage of the _Pride of Orculatar_
   along the shores of Specifica of the Sugars.  Salan Akimba, Priest.